It looks like some of the bad luck that's haunted our football team for the past 5+ years is spilling over into the basketball program. From CUBuffs.com:

University of Colorado sophomore forward/center Shane Harris-Tunks will miss the 2010-2011 men's basketball season after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his left knee, announced Friday morning by head coach Tad Boyle.

Harris-Tunks, a 6'11", 250-pound center was to be a key ingredient down low in the paint with the Buffaloes this season, injured his left knee during the first half hour of Thursday practice.

A lot of people were expecting big things out of Harris-Tunks this year, and unfortunately this probably hurts our chances of making it to the tourney. Hopefully the rest of the team can step up. Go Buffs.

There's been a lot of talk lately amongst Buffs fans about potentially adding sports to better align with our new Pac-12 brethren, so I thought it was interesting to see that Cal today announced that they're cutting five programs, including men's baseball.

Five teams will no longer represent UC Berkeley as intercollegiate sports starting at the end of the academic year as part of the effort to help sustain the financially-troubled campus Department of Intercollegiate Athletics.

Men's rugby, men's baseball, men's and women's gymnastics and women's lacrosse will be eliminated from the department's intercollegiate roster, according to the letter written by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and released to students, faculty, staff and Cal supporters today.

On one hand, it's nice to see that ours isn't the only athletic department that's struggling financially (the Pac-12 really is a better fit for us!), but on the other hand it's a sobering reminder of the state of collegiate athletics: it's incredibly expensive to field additional teams, and if you're not packing the house for football and basketball games – and getting into postseason play fairly regularly – you're probably not going to be competing in a lot of other sports.

Apparently Dan Hawkins will be featured in the next installment of the Fan Mail feature in the Denver Post, so think up some good questions and fire away! It'd be great to see fans fill up the Post's inbox and hopefully get some good responses from Hawk. 

If you want to ask CU coach Dan Hawkins about the Buffs football program, now is your chance. Hawkins has agreed to be the next subject in The Post's "Fan Mail" feature. If you have a question for him, go to fanmail@denverpost.com and fire away. His responses can be found at DenverPost.com/sports beginning Friday and in Saturday morning's edition of The Denver Post.

I hardly know where to start with questions for Hawk, but this is probably the one I'll submit: Should the Buffs finish next season with yet another losing record, will you resign as head coach without seeking compensation for the remainder of your contract? Leave a comment with the question you submit, and let's see which of our questions the Post picks for Hawk to answer.

According to Scout and Buffzone, OLB Joe Hemschoot from Lakewood, CO has committed to Stanford over CU and Oregon.

He chose Stanford over the Buffs and Oregon after a whirlwind two months in which he saw interest in his talent jump from scholarship offers from small schools such as the Colorado School of Mines to offers from some of the elite programs in major college football.

This marks yet another in-state recruiting loss for Dan Hawkins in an already weak class. Let's hope last year's recruiting class has enough impact players to make up for this year.

CU's Jenny Barringer is up for what seems to be a pretty prestigious track and field award called The Bowerman, which is awarded to the top male and female collegiate track and field athletes.  (There's an article about the award on the athletic dept website.) She's currently in second place, and voting ends this Friday morning.  It only takes a few seconds, so go to www.thebowerman.org and help support one of our best student athletes with your vote.

Interesting article on Westword today about CU's bunker mentality regarding press access to the team.

According to Dave Plati, CU's director of sports information, the university will not provide press passes to websites lacking a print or broadcast component unless they disallow pseudonymous posts or anonymous comments -- an absolutely standard function in the Internet age.

The article says the policy has been in place for about a decade and was instituted after CU was sued by a website representative, which is something I wasn't aware of.  I can understand the need to protect against litigation - defending lawsuits is the last place I want to see our limited dollars going right now - but I find it hilarious that a site like The Ralphie Report would never get press access while sites like the Denver Post get unrestricted access.

Plati acknowledges that TV stations and newspapers like the Denver Post allow anonymous comments on their sites, creating what he calls "a little bit of a gray area" as far as CU's credentialing policy is concerned. But at least staffers there all use their real names when they write, and he feels most of the operations take greater care in overseeing and filtering comments, to make sure nothing that's slanderous or simply too outrageous stays online for long. Of course, "even if it was only up for five minutes, you never know how many people saw it or commented on it before it was taken down," he notes. But it's better than nothing, in his view.

The comments on the Post website are usually offensive, uninformed, and just plain not worth reading. Yes, they'll delete comments that cross the line (whatever they deem that to be), but you'll never find the respectful discussion between passionate, thoughtful fans that's the norm on sites like The Ralphie Report.

Now, there are undoubtedly other fan sites out there that set the bar lower and maybe shouldn't be granted access, and it could definitely be tough to formulate a more inclusive policy while still weeding out the junk sites. But I think CU should at least be thinking about ways to open up access. Technology is rapidly changing the media landscape, and CU's policies will have to catch up sooner or later. In my opinion it's better to stay ahead of the curve and encourage fan participation as much as possible, especially while our athletic programs continue to struggle.

Not unexpected, but it's still nice to get some good news during the off months. Via Kyle Ringo and BuffZone:

Former Michigan wide receiver Toney Clemons has informed Colorado football coaches that he will join the Buffs and enroll in classes June 1 in Boulder.

Clemons, who spent the past two years at Michigan, one as a red shirt, must sit out the 2009 season because of NCAA transfer rules. He will be eligible to play as a junior (2010) and senior (2011) at Colorado.

"Everything just felt right when I went there on my visit, Clemons said. "I got along with the coaches, the players, I love the campus. I feel like I fit into the system perfectly there."

Clemons also visited Cincinnati and was considering transferring to numerous other schools including UConn, Oregon and Arizona State.

I guess I went to bed a bit to early last night.  Nice work by HighlandsBuff to get this fanpost up on the board.  Not the kind of news I wanted to start my day to... - Woodrow

More bad news for Max Tuioti-Mariner—he tore the ACL in his left knee in conditioning drills today. The injury is in the same knee he injured in high school, and of course this comes on the heels of having just recovered from the right knee ACL tear that kept him on the sidelines for most of last season.  Dave Plati just put out a press release confirming that MTM will miss spring drills. 

"It's a tough blow, he had to go through this with the other (knee) and now this one again," CU head coach Dan Hawkins said. "Eric McCarty (team physician) examined him tonight, and told us surgery will be in the near future once the swelling goes down. But his teammates are loving him up, we’re loving him up, and he’s generally a very positive person to begin with. We’re encouraged that we will be able to get him back for the season."

I was really hoping we could get through spring drills without any major injuries, and it's obviously disappointing to lose MTM before practices even begin. Let's hope he'll make a full recovery by August and be ready and able to return to the line as a solid contributor if not a starter. He's suffered through more than his fair share of injuries the last few years.